Why Black Friday (and Retailers) should Give Thanks to the Web.

11/22/2011

It can be agreed that many of us have much to be thankful for this upcoming Holiday season. Thanksgiving, in particular, is the holiday where we call upon the aspects of our lives that deserve a little extra appreciation. Some of us take the time to note new additions to our families, some people have new careers to be thankful for and others will give thanks for their health and happiness. Now you may be asking yourself, what does this have to do with Black Friday and the web?

First let's start with a little Black Friday background history:

As early as the 19th century Thanksgiving has been marked as the start of the Holiday Shopping season. Department stores used this notion to market themselves with the first waves of Christmas advertisements, starting with the most notable; The Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, which has been running since 1924. The parade enticed people to shop once it was over.

In the late 1960's, Newspapers officially appropriated the phrase "Black Friday" using it to describe the rush of crowds at stores and the ink by pens used to track sales.

Since then, many people see Black Friday as the day retailers show a profit for the first time in a given year and by 1990 Black Friday became a nationwide unofficial retail holiday.

While these points are true, it wasn't until 2002 that Black Friday was statistically shown to be the one of the biggest shopping day of the year. Up until that point it would rarely reach the top 5. So how does that add up?

With more and more people exploring the possibilities of the internet, online retailers began to capitalize on the people who would rather stay at home the day after Thanksgiving by giving them ways to still get at deals and bargains.Fast forward to almost a decade later and Black Friday, and more specifically, retailers, should give thanks to the web and what it has allowed them to do. Thanks should be given not for the additional profits it has allowed retailers to gain, but rather for giving the consumer the ability to shop in the comfort of their home, leaving out the competition with large crowds, possible product shortages, and still enjoy in achieving that great sale.